Financial Advisory Service 2.0

A unique advisory experience is regarded as a key success factor for both the banking and the insurance industry. Currently the advisory process is often burdened with information asymmetries and emotionally dissatisfaction. Both have lead to low overall service quality perception, to erroneous decisions, bad publicity and low customer retention. The financial service providers are today in a situation of low customer trust, normative demands and a challenging economic environment.

Our research in that field started with a broad survey at all major Swiss banks. In collaboration with Solution Providers, we interviewed advisors, marketing managers, IT managers and customers to evaluate their satisfaction with services, processes and IT support. We also identified gaps in their perceptions.

Building on this empirical study we built a system for innovative financial advisory in collaboration with a major Swiss bank. In two years time, we developed IT-artifacts to support face-to-face advisory services, with a design goal of increasing transparency, as perceived by the customer. That research provided key findings on how such systems have to be designed in order to achieve their design goals while maintaining traditional values of advisory services like strong interpersonal relationships.

Currently, together with a Swiss retail bank we strive to foster knowledge transfer as well as enhancing the service encounter experience. The first objective focuses on the transfer of knowledge from the advisor towards the customers to make them understand their decisions. The second objective focuses on the creation of positive emotions and fulfillment of advisory customers financial and psychological needs.

In our research we always aim to address these socio-technical systems by both introducing advisory processes and providing supportive technical systems. Thereby our initial perspective is strictly customer-oriented: we attempt to understand their interests and needs. Our proposed solutions, however, also consider other important stakeholders, first of all the advisor. We aim to bring together advisor and customer in an equalized, collaborative advisory process.

In our current research on such advisory processes (and how to support them), we focus on the following aspects:

• User Experience
  Intentional design of advisory situations that is tailored to the customer and her needs
• Knowledge-Transfer
  Customers should be enabled to understand all relevant factors and constructs regarding their decision
• Cooperation and Interaction
  Configuration of the advisory process and its goals
• Requirements planning
  Higher level of customer inclusion, leading to joint responsibility and stronger commitment to the results
• Shared Information Spaces
  Advisor's information accessible for the customer
  Integration of trustworthy information sources (according to the customer's preferences)

Recent publications

• Kilic, M., Heinrich, P., and Schwabe, G. 2015. “Coercing into Completeness in Financial Advisory Service Encounters,” in Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW ’15, New York, NY, USA: ACM, pp. 1324–1335. Fulltext available here
• Heinrich, P., Kilic, M., Schwabe, G. (2014). Microworlds as the locus of consumer education in financial advisory services, In: International Conference on Information Systems, Auckland, 2014. More information available here
• Heinrich, P., Kilic, M., Aschoff, F.R., Schwabe, G. (2014). Enabling relationship building in tabletop-supported advisory settings, In: 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2014-02-15. Fulltext available here
• Heinrich,P., Giesbrecht, T. Mehmet Kilic, Schwabe, G. (2012). Situated Learning in Bankberatungen. In: DeLFI 2012 - Die 10. e-Learning Fachtagung Informatik der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, 2012-09-24. Fulltext available here
• Nussbaumer, P., & Matter, I. (2011). What You See Is What You (Can) Get? Designing for Process Transparency in Financial Advisory Encounters. Accepted for presentation at INTERACT 2011, September, Lisbon.
• Schmidt-Rauch, S., & Nussbaumer, P. (2011). Putting Value Co-Creation into Practice - A Case for Advisory Support. Presented at 19th European Conference on Information Systems 2011, Helsinki
• Nussbaumer, P., Matter, I., Slembek, I., & Schwabe, G. (2011). Information Search Behavior of Financial Service Customers and the Role of Advisory Services. Presented at 19th European Conference on Information Systems 2011, Helsinki.
• Nussbaumer, P., & Schwabe, G. (2010). Gemeinsam statt einsam: Kooperative Bankberatung. Mensch & Computer 2010. Fulltext available here.
• Schwabe, G., & Nussbaumer, P. (2009). Why IT is not being used for financial advisory. Presented at the 17th European Conference on Information Systems 2009, Verona. Fulltext available here.
• Nussbaumer, P., Slembek, I., Lueg, C., Mogicato, R., & Schwabe, G. (2009). Understanding Information Seeking Behavior in Financial Advisory. Presented at the 11. Internationales Symposium für Informationswissenschaft (ISI 2009), Konstanz. Fulltext available here.
• Mogicato, R., Schwabe, G., Nussbaumer, P., Stehli, E., & Eberhard, M. (2009). Beratungsqualität in Banken. Was der Kunde erwartet. Was der Kunde erlebt. Dübendorf: Solution Providers AG. Short version available here [german] (external link to www.solutionproviders.com). Full version available here.

Contact

• Mateusz Dolata
• Mehmet Kilic
• Gerhard Schwabe